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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

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Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#591

I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.…

CISA explicitly promoted Signal for use by top level government officials. The fact that an outsider was invited to a conversation they didn't belong in is troubling, but basically nothing else about this seems to be outside of recommended policy. The administration is also claiming that there was no confidential information in the conversation, which I think is certainly debatable, but the rest of the story seems ov…

“the rest of the story seems overblown” sounds like a thought-terminator to minimize impact.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#592
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18 USC 793(f) seems to apply here: "Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing ... through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imp…

Gabbard confirmed that no classified information was contained in the conversation.

But also decided she couldn't share the same information with the committee.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#593

I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.…

I actually think the major powers mostly know what the others are doing.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Signal in this case is wrong and foolish full stop, and the extremely likely reason they did so is so they could escape standard government record keeping compliance (NARA). To start with, classified information is ONLY supposed to viewed in a SCIF. Secondly, it should never be loaded onto private devices. The private phones of national security leadership would be prime targets for every hostile intelligence a…

CISA explicitly promoted the use of signal by all top government officials.

This is true, but lacks specificity. Do you think CISA would recommend sharing details of imminent military operations via signal?

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#595

This hypocrisy reminds me of one of my former lead developers. He required everyone on the team to go through multi-person code reviews and pass an extensive CI suite before merging changes into our mainline. But him? Half that time he'd approve his own changes without review, the other half he would force-push and bypass the CI system entirely. He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid m…

> Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself? If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way? Rules for thee, not for me. You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality. The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them. You do this with media capture…

I think he could have just been a bit lazy.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#596

How exactly do you accidentally add a reporter to a signal group chat ...? That's a pretty bizarre sequence of events if it's actually what happened isn't it?

The most popular theory is that he has the same initials as someone else. Notice that most of their usernames were just their initials.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#597

I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.…

> I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved.

I am. Throw the book at them.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Signal in this case is wrong and foolish full stop, and the extremely likely reason they did so is so they could escape standard government record keeping compliance (NARA). To start with, classified information is ONLY supposed to viewed in a SCIF. Secondly, it should never be loaded onto private devices. The private phones of national security leadership would be prime targets for every hostile intelligence a…

CISA explicitly promoted the use of signal by all top government officials.

[citation needed]

Assuming this is true, how did they determine what a "top" government official is? So if you're the SecDef you should use it but not the deputy SecDef? How would this guidance not pertain to all government officials?

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#599

I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.…

The problem is that most of those 18 people are just random folks picked on the premise of just one qualification: THey'd be Yes Man/Woman!! They aren't career professionals. I believe that explains the mess they've created and their incompetent approach to their duties. It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns.

> It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns.

The problem is that the people in control of the power to impeach are also picked for being yes men/women. It's yes-men all the way down by design.

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